Halo 4's Neil Davidge is the lineman for the County

Here's a cut from the IV:How far along are you guys? How's it coming together?

We've clocked off about 4 hours of music. It's a huge amount of material. I think we originally signed on to create 150 minutes worth of music, [laughs] we went over that in the first couple of months of working on the project.

Something that occurred to me the other day was that in the last 18 months I've probably written more music than I have probably written in the last 18 years working with Massive Attack. The process has been so painfully slow, in many ways I feel like I've been released, and allowed to just my instincts and follow my gut on this project.

343 have been amazing in that way, and very very trusting, and allowing me to experiment and just gently prodding me every so often when I kind of go off track. [laughs] Well sometimes not quite so gently, but… for the most part, they've applauded my wish to experiment and just to see where we can go with a particular theme or piece of music. And sometimes I go too far, and I'm very aware of this, but it feels necessary when trying to flesh out a whole new universe—this story is a progression, it's a whole new story arc—it's important to me to progress the music as much as the story's progressed.

So, there was a lot of experimentation. They've given me a lot of free reign in that, and in return I've given them a huge amount of material from which they can then go and choose what is most fitting for the game. What's most fitting for that particular mission or that particular character.